Summary: Where does God fit into our country?

 As a society we are at a crossroads. If you have been following the news, you have to be concerned about what is happening round you today in the United States of America. Today, I do not want to spend a lot of all of the negative things that are happening in our country, because quite honestly, it will not change anything.

 I am aware of how the Courts are now saying that young people cannot pray at football games, how the State of Ohio’s state motto, “Though God all things are possible” has been labeled unconstitutional. For almost 30 years we it has been legal to kill our children in the womb. Enough of that.

 What has caused us to slide down this path? We are confused about where and if God belongs in our nation. As time goes by, we are pushing God further and further out of our society. Has it always been that way?

 What did our founding fathers fight and die for? What did they lay their lives on the line for? It is easy for us to look back on history and say that it was easy for these people to do what they did because we see that they won the war. But remember they took on the strongest nation in the world at the time, victory was not a sure thing.

 Is it important to see what our founding fathers believed and fought for? Yes it is. These men had a vision for the nation that they shed their blood for, it was a vision that was so strong, they were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds to make it happen.

 Today I want to take just a few minutes for us to look at where the founding fathers believed that God belonged in our heritage, our Government and in our educational system. I am only going to briefly touch each area this morning but if you want to look at this more closely, I would be glad to help put you on a good path to learn more. The founding fathers wrote volumes and volumes of things, it is said to see supposed educators making accusations without looking at primary source documents.

SERMON Let’s look at:

I. GOD IN OUR HERITAGE

1. There is much confusion over our nations heritage. There is much confusion over the beliefs of the founding fathers.

2. Today it is popular for uninformed people to say that the founders were not Christians. They say that Thomas Jefferson wrote a bible that had no references to miracles. This is not true, he wrote two books that were written to the Indians so that they could learn something about Jesus. Thomas Jefferson would not have liked these books being called bibles.

3. The first act of the United States Congress was to authorize the printing of 20,000 Bibles for the Indians. Further, "When our first President, under the new Constitution, received the request of both Houses of Congress concerning a national declaration of a public day of Thanksgiving and Prayer, ’George Washington...issued a National Thanksgiving Proclamation’ without any apparent concern that he might be mixing government and religion." The men who founded our country clearly wedded it to Christian principles. "By today’s standards," as syndicated columnist Don Feder says, "the founding fathers were the religious right."

4. Tim LaHaye says that "This Christian consensus is easily verified by the fact that prior to 1789 (the year that eleven of the thirteen states ratified the Constitution), many of the states still had constitutional requirements that a man must be a Christian in order to hold public office." This Christian consensus was understood by leaders long after the American Revolution, as well. Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, called for a "National Fast Day," citing the fact that "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven ...But we have forgotten God."

5. There are so many things that we no longer hear today. For example, we are now told that our Founding Fathers were atheists, agnostics, and deists; but consider this statement by Patrick Henry:

 “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!”

6. 52 of the 55 Founding Fathers who worked on the constitution were members of orthodox churches.

7. In a report delivered by the House and Senate Judiciary committees on March 27, 1854, they said that if the founders would have know that there would be an attack against Christianity, they would have strangled the revolution in the cradle.